images - Blogs - Depth Psychology Alliance2024-03-29T15:04:39Zhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/imagesIntegration: Chinese Medicine, Somatic Studies, and Depth Psychologyhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/integration-chinese-medicine-somatic-studies-and-depth-psychology2017-11-22T20:31:54.000Z2017-11-22T20:31:54.000ZBonnie Brighthttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright<div><p><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/integration-chinese-medicine-somatic-studies-and-depth-psychology" target="_blank"><img width="350" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142466258,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-right" alt="9142466258?profile=original" /></a>Chinese medicine is a system that's rooted in nature. Using primary treatment tools like acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, and cupping, the practice focuses on maintaining health and preventing illness.</p><p>As a doctor of Chinese medicine for over six years, Brian Falk has nearly completed his Ph.D. in Depth Psychology with Specialization in Somatic Studies, and he has had a chance to experience a multitude of correlations between Chinese medicine and depth psychology.</p><p>Since studying depth psychology, Falk has gained a greater awareness of the power of the psyche. He was struck by the ancient Greek healing traditions and other medical and historical aspects from which western ideas originated and how similar they were to Chinese thought; specifically in relation to how the body can be healed through dreaming. Dreams help us deepen into our own human experience, and can even be helpful in dealing with death, Falk notes. He also came to see how much imagery there is in Chinese medicine, and the power of images has helped him gain a deeper appreciation for both fields.</p><p class="Text">Falk also finds that depth psychology fills some gaps that were left by his professional training in Chinese medicine. While Chinese medicine is a complete medical system focused on treating every part of the human, the idea of the personal and the collective unconscious; the shadow; and the archetypal perspectives that aid in understanding the human condition are mostly absent, he suggests.</p><p class="Text">Falk’s larger awareness has continued to expand through his research for his doctoral dissertation entitled, “Smell Your Reflections: On the Soul’s Meaningful Scent Images.” Perceiving <i>images</i> of smell allows us to go beyond the physical experience of smells in our environment, and reach something on a much deeper level of the psyche, he asserts.</p><p class="Text">Listen to the interview or read a detailed summary article at <a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/integration-chinese-medicine-somatic-studies-and-depth-psychology" target="_blank">www.pacificapost.com/integration-chinese-medicine-somatic-studies-and-depth-psychology</a><a href="http://www.pacificapost.com/integration-chinese-medicine-somatic-studies-and-depth-psychology" target="_blank"><br /></a></p></div>Policing cyberspace, policing the psychehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/policing-cyberspace-policing2011-04-21T22:28:49.000Z2011-04-21T22:28:49.000ZCliff Bostockhttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/CliffBostock<div><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142440097,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142440097,original{{/staticFileLink}}" height="332" width="223" alt="9142440097?profile=original" /></a>I was recently referred by a client to a year-old <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/technology/19screen.html?_r=1" target="_blank">New York Times article about images</a> and the Internet. The article, “Policing the Web’s Lurid Precincts” by Brad Stone, specifically deals with how repeatedly viewing “depraved” images affects people hired to review content. <br /><p><br />Patricia Laperal, a psychologist hired to study effects of images on “content reviewers,” told the Times the results of her research</p><blockquote><p>Ms. Laperal… reached some unsettling conclusions in her interviews with content moderators. She said they were likely to become depressed or angry, have trouble forming relationships and suffer from decreased sexual appetites. Small percentages said they had reacted to unpleasant images by vomiting or crying.</p><p><br />“The images interfere with their thinking processes. It messes up the way you react to your partner,” Ms. Laperal said. “If you work with garbage, you will get dirty.”</p></blockquote><p><br />I find it intriguing that we virtually take for granted that graphic, taboo images can negatively affect a person. We do this to the sometimes absurd extent that the simplest erotic imagery is regarded as dangerous or immoral by many in our culture.</p><p><br />But, if we assert that images can have negative impact, why are so many of us disinclined to acknowledge that images can also have very positive, even therapeutic, effects? Even those most personal images, our dreams, have been dismissed by many as meaningless. (Happily, though, neuroscience is overruling that “modern” view.)</p><p><br />(Please continue reading on <a href="http://cliffbostock.com/sacreddisorder/?p=425" target="_blank">my blog, Sacred Disorder.</a>)</p><p> </p></div>Shiff, Shalit, and The Cycle of Lifehttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/shiff-shalit-and-the-cycle-of-life2011-08-13T23:30:00.000Z2011-08-13T23:30:00.000ZFisher King Presshttps://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/FisherKingPress<div><div style="text-align:center;"><br /><table style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center;" class="tr-caption-container" cellspacing="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=5"><img width="228" title="book" style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="http://www.eshalit.com/eshali/upload_files/Files/book.jpg" height="340" alt="book.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;" class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size:small;">Benjamin Shiff's painting <em><strong><span style="color:#333300;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-weight:normal;">Life</span></span></span></strong></em> </span> <span style="font-size:small;">on the cover of <strong><em><span style="color:#333300;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-weight:normal;"><a href="http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=5">The Cycle of Life</a></span></span></span></em></strong></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align:left;">A primary tenet of my perspective on the journey through life, as I describe in the newly published <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Life-Themes-Tales-Journey/dp/1926715500?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969"><i>The Cycle of Life</i></a><img width="1" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715500" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715500" />, pertains to the confluence of fate and destiny, and how conscious choice and the unexpected turns of the tide flow together. How do predetermined fate and individual destiny cohabit in one’s life, how does fate determine one’s prospects, and in what ways can the individual determine the course of his or her possibilities? Everything is foreseen, and everything is laid bare, yet everything is in accordance with the will of man, says the Talmud. Likewise, as Jung observed, something that remains unconscious in the individual psyche, may become manifest as external fate. Sometimes, what has powerfully constellated in one’s psyche, yet remains below the level of consciousness, may materialize in physical reality.</div><br /><div style="text-align:left;">Little did I anticipate that this would become apparent in my search for a cover image, the face of the book. I traveled along rivers of time and traversed cultural continents, ending up, so it seemed, with a coverless book in my hands. Then, in a sudden bliss, I remembered a painter whose name was at the tip of my tongue. As I extracted his name, Benjamin Shiff, from the layers of my memory, I was reminded of the balance between lyric harmony and pensive concern, which characterized the dream-like painting I recalled.</div><br /><div style="text-align:left;"></div></div><img width="570" title="2+shif" src="http://www.eshalit.com/eshali/upload_files/Files/2=shif.jpg" height="366" alt="2=shif.jpg" /><br /><br /><br /><br />As I traced <a href="http://www.shiffstudio.com/">the pictures on Shiff’s</a> canvas, my eyes fell upon his painting Life (1990). Undoubtedly, I had found the grail. I understood that the frustrations of my journey had not been in vain, but were, perhaps, the psyche’s signs along the road to the picture of life’s transition. The candles’ soft light of life is poised against the painful inevitability of burning out. Yet, as long as they burn, there are shades and colors; there are the distinct faces of transient existence, and there are those of obscurity, hidden in distant nature; there is a lyrical melancholy, as well as a tense harmony. The pain of death and extinction reflects the subtle strength and beauty of life. Only an unlit candle will never burn out. A fully lived life extracts the awareness of its finality. Freud claimed, succinctly, that the ultimate aim of life is death. Mortality as the ultimate boundary of physical existence, serves as the container of human life.<br /><br />In the paintings of <i>Benjamin Shiff</i>, the contrasts are subtle, and the opposites often blend into a tense yet congruent whole. Contrasting elements of identity, of earthly and heavenly, matter and spirit, float into each other, combining into one whole; together, yet distinct, united, yet separate - is this perhaps the human condition, as rendered in Shiff's exceptional self-portrait, 'my condition as a human'?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align:center;"><img width="229" title="man s" src="http://www.eshalit.com/eshali/upload_files/Files/Man-s.jpg" height="340" alt="Man-s.jpg" /></div><br /><br />Sometimes the pain is hidden behind a crucified smile. What is crucial emerges from within outward appearance; conflict and struggle blend into harmony and tranquility. In one of his paintings, crucified love hovers over the wide-open mouth of anguish. Elsewhere, the light of innocence and naïve faith is contrasted with the complexity and fragmentation of knowledge.<br /><br /><img width="579" title="2 crus" src="http://www.eshalit.com/eshali/upload_files/Files/2-crus.jpg" height="355" alt="2-crus.jpg" /><br /><br /><br /><br /><img width="640" title="3-image" src="http://www.eshalit.com/eshali/upload_files/Files/3-Image-Size.jpg" height="224" alt="3-Image-Size.jpg" /><br /><br /><br />In the aesthetics of Shiff’s paintings, light and hope merge with pensive sadness. The ordinary becomes thoughtful reflection, in which dream-like interiority finds tangible expression. There is always something hidden,secretive and elusive – a riddle, like a dream we do not understand, which calls us back, to search, to reflect and look ever deeper.<br /><br />I came across Benjamin Shiff’s painting Life in May 2011, only to learn that he died in March. As it turned out, not only did we live but half an hour apart, but his daughter, Orit Yaar, is also a Jungian analyst. I knew Orit, but had no idea that she was Benjamin Shiff's daughter. With the sadness of having lost the possibility of meeting Benjamin Shiff, the “sad optimist,” in life, I hope that his painting Life, which provides <em>The Cycle of Life</em> with its face, will serve as a candle honoring and reflecting upon his life and work.<br /><br />I wish to thank Shosh Shiff, who granted permission to feature this profound painting on the cover of The Cycle of Life.<br /><br /><a href="http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=5"><i>The Cycle of Life</i></a> can be ordered directly from <a href="http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=5">Fisher King Press</a>, from your local bookstore, and from a host of online booksellers, including <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Life-Themes-Tales-Journey/dp/1926715500?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">amazon.com</a><img width="1" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715500" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715500" />.<br /><br /><a style="clear:right;display:inline;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://www.fisherkingpress.com/"><img name="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393483198773291202" style="display:block;height:100px;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;margin-top:0px;width:110px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_66tG-ibjAoU/StmAZLTraMI/AAAAAAAAASs/kmBy84VNLJ8/s200/fkplogo110x100.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393483198773291202" border="0" alt="fkplogo110x100.jpg" /></a>Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.<br /><br /><ul><li>International Shipping.</li><li>Credit Cards Accepted.</li><li>Phone Orders Welcomed. Toll free in the US & Canada: 1-800-228-9316 International +1-831-238-7799 skype: fisher_king_press</li></ul></div>